Achilles went through many, many memories of Mansa Nguna as his scope expanded into territory that felt dangerous simply by virtue of how much it contained.

The things he now knew seemed boundless and grand in ways that exceeded what he had anticipated when he began sifting through her integrated existence. Eons of accumulated experience compressed into seconds of processing time as his Assimilation sorted through the archive with the efficiency of something that had grown considerably more practiced at this task since first consuming a Fundamental Depth Master in the early days of his imprisonment within The Existential Lattice.

He kept looking.

He was seeking any critical memories that would explain potential dangers arising from what he had done to Mansa Nguna, any threads that connected her existence to monitoring systems or failsafes or obligations that would trigger investigation before he could establish distance and cover.

He kept on looking.

Until he found a memory that made him go very still.

Mansa Nguna was younger in this memory, the lazy gold eyes holding less of the accumulated remove that eons of scientific detachment eventually produce in beings who spend their existence studying others rather than connecting with them. She was sitting with a man whose features shared enough with hers that the relationship required no announcement.

Her father.

He was a Gilded One of considerable power, his presence in the memory radiating authority that pressed against its edges with the particular warmth of someone who had deliberately softened what they were capable of in order to occupy the same space as someone they loved without overwhelming them.

His hands moved with practiced gentleness as he placed a golden thread of Observable Force directly into her heart, the motion careful and precise and entirely at odds with the clinical efficiency Achilles had observed in every other interaction her memories contained.

"You will not remember this afterwards as I know you wish to be independent."

His voice carried the particular texture of someone saying something they needed to say regardless of whether it would be heard or retained.

"But I cannot bear to have you leave our House unprotected, so I have laid out a protection on your heart that will activate at any sign of danger your Ego feels."

The golden thread settled into place within her heart with the ease of something that belonged there.

"Once it activates, it will counteract any attack and give you time to leave. And I will come to save you soon after." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

He smoothed her hair back from her face with a gesture so habitual it clearly predated conscious thought, something done ten thousand times across spans of time that made the motion itself a kind of language.

"I simply cannot let you go out there without something of mine keeping watch over you. You are my one and only girl."

The memory ended there, as memories of tender moments often do, not with resolution but with the weight of feeling that needed no narrative conclusion.

...!

Achilles felt his mind buzz with the particular coldness of someone who had just identified a problem and was simultaneously calculating its implications and his available responses.

That protection had never activated.

She had never received an attack in the conventional sense that her father’s failsafe had been designed to detect. Her Ego and existence had not perceived danger through the channels his protection monitored because Achilles had not attacked her, he had integrated himself into her through Observable Force she welcomed voluntarily, and by the time his spores comprised enough of her foundations to constitute a threat, there was no longer sufficient independent consciousness remaining within her to register that something had gone wrong.

He had devoured the protection alongside her.

It sat within his integrated existence now, a golden thread among countless others, never having fulfilled its intended purpose because the danger it was designed to respond to had arrived in a form its creator had not anticipated.

The cost of Assimilating her was heavy in ways that extended beyond what he had initially measured. He had thought he could stay here, could even take on her form and leave a constructed body behind to delay investigation, could move through the Silver Philotimo with her identity as cover while he consolidated what he had gained.

But now.

BOOM!

The space he was in collapsed into a golden light as he disappeared instantly, his decision made in the fraction of a moment between recognizing the problem and the problem becoming irreversible. He did not wait because he could not afford to wait, not with a father’s protection woven into the heart of the woman he had just consumed, not with the thread of Observable Force that had been placed there with the specific intention of summoning exactly the kind of power that would be arriving in response to its silence.

He ran.

WU! WU! WU!

And...

A second after he left.

BOOM!

The space above where he had been shattered with violence that communicated the difference between power being used and power being unleashed without regard for the surrounding architecture of reality. A terrifying aura of Pride and power came barreling down through the breach with the quality of something that had felt a thread go silent and crossed whatever distance separated it from that silence in the span between heartbeats.

It was howling.

Not with battle intent or the cold calculation of a Gilded One engaging a threat. With pain.

"WHO?!"

The voice crashed through the shattered laboratory space with force that made the remaining fragments of the facility dissolve entirely, authority that could not contain itself within the boundaries of controlled expression because grief had removed the container.

"WHO HAS TAKEN MY DAUGHTER?!"

BOOM!

An apocalyptic power crashed down and locked onto the coordinates where Achilles had just been standing, perception of terrifying depth scanning every aspect of the space with the desperate thoroughness of someone searching for evidence rather than merely hunting a target.

"Little Nguna!"

The voice broke on the name in ways that Gilded Ones were not supposed to break, the hierarchy and the pride and the eons of accumulated remove all meaning nothing against the specific frequency of a parent calling for a child who could not answer.

"LITTLE NGUNA!"

BOOM!